'House' Is Solidly Built But A Little Bit Flat

October 6, 1985|By Reviewed by Nancy Pate, Sentinel Book Critic

Tracy Kidder's 1982 book, The Soul of a New Machine, focused on a group of computer engineers racing to beat the competition by coming up with a new and better computer. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general non- fiction, had the best qualities of a good novel -- atmosphere, suspense and a group of engaging characters. Even as Kidder crammed the book with tantalizing bits and bytes of complex computer lore, he captured the passion of the young engineers on the threshold of a technological breakthrough.

Kidder's new book, House, chronicles the building of a 12-room single- family home in Amherst, Mass., in 1983. As in The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder looks at the people involved, who, in the end, are the heart and soul of the project -- the owners, the architect, the builders. He also weaves in fascinating information about everything from architectural trends to the craft of carpentry to the great lumber forests of Maine.

House ends up being a sturdy, well-constructed book, but the foundation on which it is built -- the construction of a house -- lacks the mystique of the computer world. Yes, building a house is part of the American dream. And, yes, the people involved are interesting, and, to some extent, unusual. But even a writer as good as Kidder -- and he is an excellent writer -- is going to have a tough time wresting drama and suspense out of often mundane events.

Early on in the book, for example, there is the matter of $660. The builders, a four-man company called Apple Corps, have sweated out what they think is a fair and final contract bid for building the house, $146,660. But the owners, Jonathan and Judith Souweine, who naturally want to keep costs as low as possible without sacrificing the quality of the house, are unaware that bargaining is not part of the final contract process. They insist that Apple Corps round off the figure to $146,000, which the builders do so reluctantly and with hidden resentment.

The $660 becomes symbolic of the tensions and misunderstandings that arise among the Souweines, Apple Corps and architect Bill Rawn in the weeks in which the house is being built. Often these are communication problems, unintentionally exacerbated by the buried issue of social class, white collar vs. blue collar. Sometimes, they are questions of aesthetics, as in the choice of bricks used to build the hearth or the number of pilasters on one side of the Greek Revival-style house.

Still, such conflicts can't help but seem somewhat petty to the general reader. Yet bricks, pilasters and $660 are about all Kidder has to work with when it comes to dramatic moments.

He tries to make up for the paucity of suspense with his detailed portaits of the people involved, pages of their conversations and accounts of how the carpenters build a staircase, shingle a roof, install a door. All is nailed together with facts:

-- ''One cost of building in America is about six hundred deaths per year.''

In the end, all this is both too much and not enough, and House creaks under the weight. As carpenter Jim Locke says of the finishing work on the house: ''It's like geography. The interesting parts are the edges. Where things come together. The middle parts that are all the same are not so interesting to me.''